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Kennedy News

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin today announced Woodrow Whitlow Jr. will be the next director of NASA's John H. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.

Whitlow, who has been serving as deputy director of NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida, succeeds Julian Earls, who is retiring at the end of the year.

The Glenn Research Center, with about 3,300 civil service and contract employees, is a key research center for aeronautical propulsion, space propulsion, space power, space communications and microgravity sciences in combustion and fluid physics. The center consists of 24 major facilities and more than 500 specialized research facilities at a 350-acre site near Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, and the 6,400-acre Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio.

Whitlow joined the U.S. space program in 1979 as a research scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. He also has served as director of the Critical Technologies Division of the Office of Aeronautics at NASA Headquarters in Washington and as deputy director of the Aeronautics Program Group, deputy director of the Airframe Systems Program Office and chief of the Structures Division at Langley Research Center. In addition, he has served at Glenn Research Center as director of research and technology. He became deputy director of the Kennedy Space Center in 2003.

He holds bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.